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Monday, 28 September 2009

Very late updates on douchbaggery in the IGDA

So a couple of months ago I told you all about the antics of a certain Dr Tim Langdell. A liar, a cheat and a charlatan who has over the years managed to carve a fairly impressive niche for himself as one of the "top 5 industry specialists".In truth hes a blow hard and a bully who has managed to wheedle and wangle his way into various industry in dins and work his way up a greasy pole to be "recognized"

Thats not to say that once upon a time he did indeed manage to achieve something, he set up a company in the late 70's called Softek which was one of the founding companies of our industry. And as was normal at that time, was a small dingy office based venture that provided an outlet for the creative young nerds of the day who wanted to sell their games.

A great many current game giants started this way and grew, or started this way then were swallowed up by others who got a bit bigger, and they in turn got swallowed and they in turn...you get the picture.

Tim's little company though never really quite reached the heights he'd hoped it would and never really grew big enough to swallow others or be of interest to the bigger fish in the pool. So in the 80's, when branding became the big thing, he attempted to develop his own brand and renamed his company The Edge.Nice ring to it don't you think?. Tim also knew the value of self promotion and managed to get himself a seat on pretty much every board going for any industry related committee that was formed. It wasn't long though before he started to belive his own press and stories of his empire raised more than a few eyebrows.

It did help to raise his profile a bit, but The Edge still never really became the power house that Ocean, Infogrammes, Gremlin and the like became in the 80's and 90's

Financially then Edge slowly died off, leaving scores of pissed of developers and contractors who never got their money and Tim it seems (according to accounts from former employees) actually became quite proud of his ability to screw people out of money. But eventuality the game was up.

The Edge simply could not compete with the now very established and professional companies making games and it was time for Tim to move on. To the US in fact, leaving his debts and bad feelings behind him for now.

His career in the US is less traceable, He "transferred" his assets form The Edge to a new Edge Games corporation in the US, and continued to try to release games, but it all came to an awkward end around 1994. The unthinkable happened...Tim was no longer in the games industry...he had to get a proper job...teaching. (not a bad profession at all if I say so myself).

But Tim had one little ace up his sleeve. Back in his branding days, he'd trademarked the phrase "The Edge" and could therefore claim license fees from any unsuspecting use of that fairly common word.

He had been doing this while The Edge was still trading but with no actual business to run now, Tim was free to focus on his new source of income and continue his self branding madness as well as his now out of control self promotion which pretty much defied any logical scrutity..but so long as the plebs continued to think he was important, he was impotent..sorry important.

Until of course he ran into Mobigame's little Iphone game called The Edge.It would take me hours to type up what happened next, and I briefly went over it in my last post, but lets say for the 1st time in a long time, Tim finally met someone who didn't want to pay up to save hassle....but best to read this for a full run down of those events and some of the histry.

Now me and several others called for Tim's removal from the board of the IGDA, and despite really appalling inaction by the board, we did eventually manage to get the 2000odd signatures needed to call a special meeting to vote on his removal.

Sadly however before the meeting Tim resigned claiming it was for the good of the IGDA..though in truth the board were about to vote him off anyway for his idiotic mistake of threatening me personally with a lawsuit by writing to my employers using his board of the IGDA title :)

He is gone from the IGDA at last, some of my colleges made this little skit up

Very amusing and so accurate.

Tim is still around though, his antics since his booting for the IGDA are comical and also a little sad. you can find some info here Tim still clearly desperately wants to be something he's not, a games publisher. But really he's just trying to convince a court that he's a games publisher because unless he can prove he's actively trading (which he clearly is not) he will lose his beloved trademark and only claim to "fame".

Tim Langdell, is apparently currently in hiding, several court officers carrying envelopes and briefcases have been knocking on his door wishing to talk to him. So far they have not quite managed it.